The fellow frowned and said: “Ah yes, I have just come from that city, because I heard that there are true Sufis there and wished to learn some of their Wisdom. But I entered a tekke (Dervish Lodge) where it became very clear that all the dervishes there were false in their dances. Their leader spoke about the Shariah and Law in a fashion that was even more strict than that of the Saudi authorities! For instance, he claimed the nikab (veil) is prescribed for the wives and that all who even taste alcohol will go to hell. He even said that listening to music is in the hellfire. All that, and similar nonsense: the kind of thing I would have expected from a Wahabi, but spouted by a self-professed Sufi sheikh. All this, while wearing the garment of Sufism! They are orthodox Sunni Islam wearing the garment of Sufism!”

The Father and Mother constitute a primal scene of kissing and being kissed. This is the nature of the Breath of Love from the Great Face, as fantasized by the resulting dialectic inherent in the emergent subject’s Little Face

It is correct to say that souls are asexual. But they have sexual components, and this derives from their formation from the breath of the Divine, because this process of this breathing is sexuality itself.

To be brief, mythopoeic alchemy (borrowed from Issac Luria, mediated via Freud and Lacan) must suffice to make my point. To speak of breathing requires us to speak of the inner and the outer: breath flows from the inner to the outer. This distinction is sexual: for sexuality is nothing but distinction. So breathing is sexual. Let us call the inner the Father and the outer the Mother.

The Father breathes out Love to the Mother, who breathes in Love. But if the Divine is a unity, then the breath must be circular. And so the breath is a bijective dialectic: the Mother breathes back Love to the Father.

Similarly, the Father kisses the Mother actively and the Mother kisses the Father in receipt. Every kiss involves two simultaneous modes: of giving and receiving.

Finally, the Father speaks to the Mother, soothing words of Wisdom. In this case, the Mother listens in silence, because, while kissing and breathing is a two-way bijection, the distinction that underlies speech is one of active words and responsive silence. So the Mother is silence here.

Interestingly, the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan describe a similar grounding relationship, perhaps through the mechanism of some collective unconscious (Jung’s revenge on his former collaborator!), perhaps deliberately (Lacan did read Kabbalah, at least).Continue reading “The Primal Scene”→

War arises -- and is prescribed -- as repression of an original trauma and desire for union of two masculine names. Its solution ... a transfiguration of West to North and East to South.

The usual argument was going on at the Sufi forum. A group were arguing that true Sufism is a cure to the disease that is Islam. The traditional adherents of Tassawuf were incensed at this provocation. But of course such remarks recently made them feel slightly ambiguous, because mainstream Islam’s relationship with its mystical child had become strained to the point of breaking.

The provocateur said: “The problem with your Tassawuf is that its basis is an Islam within a Tasawwuf within an Islam. And this holds it back: the child needs to be freed of its violent, hateful parent for good!”

The Tailor replied: “The problem of aggression is much bigger than that. For the aggression of Islam today — the aggression you all know exists and would either deny as true Islam or else affirm as its true horror — this aggression sources its polemic from the State of Israel. Whatever is said or done, all polemic returns eventually to Israel. In a way, I agree: the problems of Islam, and their solution, lie in Israel. And the problems of Tasawwuf are the problems of Islam.”